


Truant Love

by Teaandcakes



Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-08
Updated: 2016-07-20
Packaged: 2018-07-13 22:01:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 13,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7139216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Teaandcakes/pseuds/Teaandcakes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post Spectre fic. James leaves with Madeleine as in the film, canon compliant up to the end of the film assuming you agree about UST between Bond and Q.</p><p>This is what happens next. </p><p>Rating may change as we go...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Leavetaking

Bond walked away with Madeleine, head high, glancing at her every few seconds. Seeing her expression, he squeezed her hand tighter and strode more decisively forwards. 

Q was business-like, as always, busy, unconcerned, it seemed. Summarising the situation, organising the practicalities. Tanner put him in a staff car at some point, to take him home. Instead, he instructed the driver to take him to Q branch. 

It was deserted when he got through the endless security and into his blast-proof Q branch bunker. This was more like home than his flat, that was rarely seen and even less regarded by him. His office locked and had auto screening in the glass walls. There was a fridge, a private bathroom and a sofa. 

He flicked the screening blinds. Triggered the deadlocks. Leaned back against the door, and waited. Not long to wait. In less than a minute the unflappable Quartermaster...was sobbing like a fucking baby. 

........

Eve saw him leave, and touched Bill Tanner's sleeve. 

"Do you think Q will be okay?"

Bill made a sound both understanding and non-committal. 

"Who knows? For what it's worth, I don't get this. Not at all."

"Because Bond's rarely looked to settle down, still less retire?" Eve's brow furrowed.

"Nope. I can see why he's retiring from active service, though God knows how he'll cope. It's a rational decision, he knows he's getting too bloody old for the field and wants to leave on his terms. 

"Settling down, well, he wanted that before, once, if you remember, with Vesper. Albeit - that didn't end well, of course."

"Understatement", murmured Moneypenny. "So why don't you get it?"

Tanner smiled a small pale smile.

"Because I can see he adores Madeleine, we all can, but to me there's something there that's wrong. Something more about filling the gaps in both their lives and personalities, and not about making the whole greater than either of the two of them separately. In basic terms, I think she has Daddy issues and he's stepping into the vacancy."

Eve grimaced. 

"I don't know? I never know whether, I never know if I like, you know, that sort of terminology."

Bill nodded. 

"I know. I agree with you. It's the best way I can describe it, but I fully accept it's him looking for that as much as her.

Eve shook her head. 

"So why is it a problem, necessarily? We all have different reasons for selecting our partner, surely?"

Bill looked at the empty road, where Bond had been standing.

"Because I think if I'm really honest, Eve, I think he was in love with Q, and I'm absolutely certain Q is in love with him."

...........

Eve kept in touch with Bond, the only one to do so consistently. He seemed happy, almost manic, there was a house, and much to do, he said.

No one was irreplaceable, not even him, and a new 007 had been quickly appointed. The new man, Adam, was about as far from James Bond as it was possible to imagine. Tall, oddly awkward - and as at ease with technology as James had been with a fist, he embodied the new world order that Q had prefaced in all their lives. 

............,

Q was different now, four months on. 

He looked different, for a start, drastically so. He was working out, albeit the results were modest. He dressed more casually, less PhD and more freshers week. He ate little, and got even thinner than before. Most dramatically of all, he cut his hair. Short, really short, almost army short, and took to contact lenses. Eve thought she wouldn't recognise Q if she didn't know it was him from his badge. From confident and geeky master of Q branch, to a shadowy and people avoiding slight figure, almost like a prisoner of war in newsreel footage. 

HR were concerned. About Q himself, purely as an asset. His stability, physical and mental was always known to be something that couldn't be taken for granted. Now, they thought he needed to take some time off. They hadn't yet told Q that. 

...........

The crisp cream thick-weave envelope landed on Q's desk. Eve's fingers still held it as the green eyes looked up from some intricate soldering project. Eve tapped the envelope. 

"This is..."

Q's red lips clamped together. 

"I know what that is, Eve. All wedding invitations look alike."

Eve sat down on the corner of the desk as Q turned the envelope slowly over and over in his hands.

"I'm not going to ask you whether you are going to go. People will understand. If you don't go." Eve smiled nervously.

There was a non committal sound, the envelope was left, and the beautiful head shorn of its locks looked back down at the soldering iron. Answer to Eve's question, though, came there none.

..........

When she had gone, Q opened the envelope. There was the usual copperplate invitation, menu, gift list. And a note, handwritten, in Bond's bold flourish of a script.

"Will you come? I would like it - very much - if you were there. Ignore the dress code, come as you like.

James."

Q dropped the invitation back onto the desk like a bad smell. He picked up the soldering iron, and resumed his tracery.

........

He did not go to the wedding. Instead, he surprised HR by readily agreeing to some long overdue leave. He flew to Munich the day before the ceremony. So it was that as James Bond and Madeleine were exchanging vows, Q was waking up in a bed with a man he didn't recognise, in a flat he didn't remember travelling to. He wanted more of this, this not remembering. When he couldn't remember, it couldn't hurt.


	2. Re-enter James Bond

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sooo...rating goes up to mature just because of sexual descriptions. 
> 
> Q is still in Germany, but Moneypenny is about to call in a favour from the retired Bond.

The man Q had been comprehensively fucked by but hadn't recognised, walked back into the room, holding a cup of coffee in each hand. He handed one to Q. Stefan, that was his name, Q thought, pleased he'd remembered it. Or...was it? He wasn't sure now, maybe he just looked like a Stefan? Couldn't possibly ask now...too late for intros. He thought he might be good-looking but it was hard to tell when your contacts were scratching your eyeballs out and should have been taken out six hours ago at least. He scrambled up, pulling on his clothes in haphazard style like the lover has to when the burly husband returns home unexpectedly. Time to leave. Now. He swigged some coffee, and went to go. 

Stefan looked hurt. 

"You don't want to stay? It was good, last night, yes?"

It was nice of Stefan to say, Stefan clearly knew himself to be an adequate lover at the very very least, but when talking to Q he was surely just being kind? Q knew that his style of sex, moving little and offering himself up with arse in the air as an object, was not appreciated by most partners. Either, they saw it as him being like an object and treating them as one too, just there to service him in a roughly mechanistic way, which made them angry, or they found it a turn-off, his stillness and supplication representing an unwilling or at least indifferent partner, at least in their minds. But it was what he did, what he'd always done. It didn't occur to him to vary it.

Q had had sex before Munich, in his past, then, though not since he joined M16. Not since he encountered Bond. His limited experience and unwavering behaviour had given him a feedback sheet that was distinctly uncomplimentary. 

He decided to cast his net into potentially more appreciative waters, at least for now.  
and left the crestfallen Stefan behind (who, in truth, found him disappointing in bed but so gorgeous out of it he really wanted to keep him around). 

...............

Q hit the clubs, and with the clubs, the club drug scene. It was still over a week before he was due to report back at Vauxhall Cross. Plenty of time. 

..............

In Hampshire, the new Mrs Bond (the title was still a novelty on the tongue) was dressing, donning her tennis whites. There was a hard court at The Chantry, the house they had bought, and she played, most days, with friends. James lay in bed, watching her smooth the crisp garments over her slender curves. A newspaper lay untouched on the bed, the pile of post built up in the post tray in the hall. Dust bunnies already on the black and white stone chequerboard floor.

He was bored. 

Madeleine suggested solutions, she was so eager and so practical. Get a dog. Get two dogs. Play golf. Play bridge. Hell, play darts down the Three Crowns if it makes you happy? Then the solutions became bigger in scale. Move to London. Move abroad. Start a family. 

She never suggested going back to work, back to Six. He knew she couldn't cope with that idea, that it would grieve her. So he tried golf, but found it made him prone to irrational outbursts of rage at the smallest provocation. He tried card games, but Madeleine wasn't keen when she discovered it was high stakes poker, not bridge. Their sex life was good, he was James Bond after all, but it was pedestrian. Leaving Six had meant losing so much more than his job. He lost the unexpected sex, the danger, the adrenalin rush. And he missed the people. Some he could happily leave behind, it's true, but a few he felt a pang for. Mainly Moneypenny, M and Tanner were slightly cold fish but Eve was fun. Madeleine was beautiful and loving and needing of his care, but she was far more earnest than he'd realised after their whirlwind romance led to the aisle. She'd started a PhD in something too complicated to get his head around. He knew she was doing it so she didn't have to think about why it was that her new husband was quite so obstinately against thinking about having children. 

She finished dressing, and kissed him. She smelled fantastic. She loved him. He was an unworthy and ungrateful man who didn't deserve her. Funny thing, though, knowing all that didn't make an iota of difference. 

Bored. 

She left. A fly buzzed against the window and he thought violent notions about different ways to kill it. 

He'd bought this place with the money from selling the vast Skyfall estate to a foreign oligarch who wanted it for shooting, and to build a shooting lodge. Having the ruin of the old house meant easier planning permission. There was to be a helipad. Bond didn't care about that now, though he minded at the time. They'd been welcomed with open arms into the local PLU set*, a handsome and wealthy couple, newly married and clearly so in love. The Chantry couldn't have gone to a better owner when much loved Sir Peter, who had been born in the house, died last year at the age of ninety two.

Authors note : *PLU - People Like Us. (Used by some aristo pals of mine in real life)

Bored.

................

The phone rang. Usually he waited for the ansaphone to kick in to screen out unwanted social invitations. Something made him answer it this time, he couldn't have said what, afterwards, if he'd been asked.

"Eve. Not your usual time to ring with office gossip and details of your latest sordid conquests?"

As he spoke, though, he sensed the tension in the air between them, even though that was scientifically impossible. 

"James. I need a favour from you. I wouldn't have involved you but it's unofficial. To go through the usual channels would mean probably dismissal."

"Of course." James sat up, senses prickling pleasurably at the idea of a task, a job, a mission of any kind, however little. "I don't want to see my Moneypenny sacked. I'll do it, whatever it is."

Eve sighed. 

"Not me, James. I wouldn't be sacked. And not the standard kind of mission. HE would be sacked. Q. I need you to...well. I'm not sure what I need you to do....Talk to him, really? Try to make him...he's in trouble...Oh, shit, someone's coming."

"Just be quick." Bond was taken aback by the idea that the cool and unflappable Q might need any help from anyone. Least of all him. "Tell me. Where is he, and what's he got caught up in."

"Munich, lots of very casual sex. But I think drugs too, now. He was supposed to be back yesterday but hasn't showed, I can't hold HR with fibs much longer."

James was stunned. He blinked several times to reboot his brain, but Eve really had said what she said. He frowned, then swung into mission mode.

"Email me the address, book me on the next flight after six tonight. I'll need a cab at the other end and enough Euros to see me through."

Eve sounded relieved, but then blurted out.

"Will Madeleine be okay with you doing this?"

James sounded puzzled.

"Of course. Why would she not be?"

Eve sighed. Poor deluded James. Now wasn't the time to tell him to wake up and smell the coffee. Madeleine was sweet and James was totally unsuited to do anything other than keep her feeling safe and let her call him Daddy. 

"No, I just mean you going at short notice."

"It will be fine. As long as I'm back for the hideous house party at the weekend."

...............

As Eve rang off, she stared at the screen of her phone for a while longer. Then, she turned to her screen and started typing the email to James Bond, hoping that she'd done the right thing.

James meanwhile, was out of bed, in the dressing room, shedding clothes out of wardrobes and drawers into a suitcase. Germany. Q. He couldn't help a hot fierce warmth inside him at the idea of seeing then thoughts intruded that were less welcome. Men, with Q. He had no idea why that should make him feel murderous, but he needed to go to Munich. 

He left a note for Madeleine.


	3. Munich in the rain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bond follows Q to Munich.

Eve had excelled herself and found a private jet Bond could piggyback on. It would cost more, and Six's generosity would only stretch so far, but she decided that this was a special case, and booked it under the "urgent medical evacuation of operative" code. She could, and would, argue it out with the pointy heads later. For now, Bond was on the plane almost as soon as he reached City Airport, with no danger of screaming children or queues or enticing giant Toblerone displays.

The flight was smooth, undisturbed by anything save for the stewardesses offering refreshments. James downed one whisky, then stuck to water. He needed a clear head for this. If he was really honest, he began to wonder what he was doing here. He had no idea what Q was playing at, and was under no illusion that he would be welcomed with open arms....

............

On arrival at Munich, a car was waiting. Driving through the city streets, dark and glittering now with the rain coming down hard, he called Madeleine. She answered, but was a little quiet. He had to winkle out of her how things were at home, but all seemed well. 

Funny word that, home. It didn't feel like a home to him, didn't give him that sense of sanctuary, which might just be a question of giving it more time, or...maybe not? Maybe he couldn't see any one place as home, like business people who travel constantly and have the office as their personal address, renting out their home, moving from one business class seat to hotel, on to another, across continents, shifting and rootless, owned by their job? It hadn't mattered before, being owned by his job, it was the only place he'd ever felt he belonged, and he'd been grateful, but now the job was gone. 

Madeleine was supposed to have filled the void, yet for now at least, the chasm was widening, not closing and healing. He felt old and tired. He was about to order the driver to stop at a shop that sold booze, when a picture of Q's face flashed into his mind, his slightly pursed full lips when Bond did something slightly outside the protocol in Q's sight or hearing. Bossy boots. Bond found himself smiling slightly. He didn't stop and buy the whisky after all, just looked out of the window at the streetlights and the people sheltering in doorways from the unrelenting rain.

............

He arrived at the address Eve had given him, a flat in a very tired area of town, paid off the cab and walked towards the front door. As he did so, it opened in front of him, and a middle-aged man appeared, but with no sign of Q. Thick-set and coughing, the man stopped on the step, lit a cigarette, swore at the weather and, finally, hurried away down the street. 

As James got to the front door, he could see that it was at the side of a larger dwelling and that this door only served one flat, so it must be Q's. Which meant that Eve's Intel was right, and also meant that the tattooed squaddie-look character he'd seen leaving must have been visiting Q. 

"Visiting." Well, that was one way to put it, he supposed. 

He rang the bell. Even that sounded down at heel, the peal cracked and reluctant. 

There was no answer. Thankfully, he found that Tattoo Man hadn't closed it properly, too much in a hurry to light his cigarette, and James quickly found himself inside without having to resort to picking the lock and drawing attention to himself.

In front of him was a flight of stairs, and he quietly made his way up. He found he was holding his breath, much as he did at critical moments of a mission, he'd trained himself to be able to do it for longer than you'd imagine possible. His heart rate was steady, though, his was a grim intent, not a nervous foray.

.........

The front door was closed, but the frame looked terribly rotten and when he put his shoulder to it, it gave readily. There was no reaction to the sound of the cracking wood. 

The hallway of the flat was gloomy, dim light filtering through grimy net curtains. The paint on the walls had been white, but was scratched and yellowing. 

James expected to find Q asleep, but when he pushed open the second door he tried (the first was a very uninviting bathroom), he came face to face with his former Quartermaster, as, naked, he tried to get out of the low framed bed and pull on some clothes. He managed the former, but caught his foot in his jeans (no sign of any underwear, Bond noted grimly), and slowly toppled back onto the bed, where he lay, face down and butt naked, making small, angry sounds. 

If it wasn't so serious it might have been really funny. 

Bond could smell the odour of sweat and sex in the room. Not the very faint trace you might detect in the bedroom of a happy couple, but the deep, throat choking taint of a room, and sheets, that are never cleaned, of multiple partners and condoms cast aside into bins that are never emptied. 

Q was muttering now, imprecations under his breath. He was cross, and probably high. James tried to not look at Q's body, but of course he did. Small bruises littered the cream-white tones of his skin, and larger ones on his hips. James could see Q's hair of course, too, shaven to the scalp, almost, only the Quartermaster's strongly dark complexion making it seem a little less than bald. James couldn't take his eyes off the point at the back of Q's neck where his dark fuzz of hair stopped, and his swan-like neck started to curve. 

Bond strode over to the dirty window and threw it open, letting light and air in the room, then walked back to the bed. Q turned slowly, uncrumpling his face from the mattress and squinting in the unwelcome intrusion of light and real life and James Bond. 

"Ah, 007. Fuck off, 007."

Bond hadn't expected to be welcomed with open arms, but civility he DID demand. 

He leaned over the bed, seeing Q calculate what his intentions might be in such a manoeuvre, but clearly rapidly concluding he was no match for Bond's physical powers. He picked Q up like a rag doll, still naked, and slung him over his shoulder, despite Q deciding to try and struggle free. 

Dumped in the shower tray, James ignored his prisoner's attempts at escape and turned on the surprisingly powerful shower. Cold. He doubted that the hot water pressure would have been up to much, but that didn't matter. His Quartermaster was getting a wakeup call in the shape of a freezing cold dunking. 

Q was blearily outraged, conscious that he was mildly doped up, far from free of dried-on emissions and naked as a baby. Shouting, he tried and failed to scramble free from the icy deluge. 

Still, his subconscious marvelled at the ease with which Bond had scooped him up. 

He was dumped onto the bed, and a towel roughly rubbed over most of him, enough so that he didn't shiver. He sat hunched, skinny legs everywhere like a fawn caught in the rain, water trickling icily from his pubic hair, Bond having avoided towelling the latter. 

..........

Bond was talking to him. Q supposed he had better listen, though he was adamant that he intended to take no notice of what the ex-agent had to say. 

"...so is this it, how you want to spend your time? For a while? For good? How long, Q, how long will the appeal last. And why? What is this for, this crisis, this adventure? Until you've been fucked by every last man in the city? Until you contract something...Hep? HIV?"

Q was looking at Bond's face without really hearing the words. He looked genuinely upset, something Q couldn't remember since the former M's death. Q didn't know why Bond would be especially bothered.

James was still speaking, with hands gesturing that he didn't intend to leave Q here. 

"You can't do that", Q protested muzzily. "You have no jurisdiction, legally or in the grey area Six inhabits. The only way you can force me to go with you is by extraordinary rendition, and to be frank, that hasn't played well in the last few years, has it?"

Bond smiled slightly. He was pleased to see Q had not lost his snark along with his dignity and possibly his job. 

"No. You're right, of course. I can only request that you come back with me."

Q thumped his head back against the pillows, the towel falling open as he did so, revealing the battered, beautiful figure. 

"And I can refuse - which I am doing - and request you to leave. Please leave, 007. Close the door to behind you, would you? If you get a move on you can make the last flight back to London."

James shook his head at Q, but said nothing. Instead, he picked up a woollen blanket from the floor, shook the dust off it and wordlessly placed it over Q's body. 

Then, he looked around, lips tightening in a frown, and left the room, without another word being said. Q heard the muffled bang of the front door a moment later, and stared up at the crazed plaster on the ceiling. He reached for a cigarette and the remains of a glass of brandy by the bed. He could hear the mice in the attic, wearing hob-nailed boots again. He hoped Bond had a nice flight.


	4. Bond disobeys Q...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Q has told Bond to fuck off back to London and leave him in his seedy Munich flat. Bond has no intention of doing so.
> 
> Updates twice weekly

Bond had no intention of complying with Q's request to (as he so charmingly put it), "fuck off", and once out of sight of the flat, he just carried on walking a couple of blocks and then checked into a hotel which offered considerably more comfort than the unpleasant dive Q seemed to be calling home. He wasn't very hungry after his encounter with his Quartermaster, so ordered rye bread and a little salami and cheese with some fruit, food he could browse at with his fingers while he thought. 

His conclusions were clear.

He needed to get back inside the flat, to see what Q was eating, or not eating. There was no evidence of any food from the glance he'd got into the kitchenette. There was a bottle of Scotch and a few crackers, nothing else. A wizened apple, half eaten and left, didn't count.

And - and this was the crux of why James was worried - why was Q doing this, and staying there? Eve had emailed him pretty much all of Q's file, and it revealed to Bond's surprise that Q was considerably wealthier than the rest of them put together. Only child of ordinary parents - but - his father's sister had built up a property portfolio from her humble beginnings then died childless. She left the lot to Q. Q didn't need to be staying in that kind of flat, bloody hell, Q didn't need a job at all. 

So apart from the food question (the last thing Bond felt qualified to deal with was a full blown eating disorder), and why he was living in near squalour, the other question was about his activities. Was he encouraging men to come round for sex for fun, or for money? And if the latter, why the hell would he, when he had over half a million in his current account and many times that in savings and assets. 

It would have to wait for tomorrow. 

.........

There was a gym at the hotel, well-equipped and sparkling, and James used both it, and the adjacent pool early the next morning, to release some of the tension and aggression that he could feel building up in him whenever that seedy flat down the road crossed his mind. 

This was something he'd had to learn to deal with, the anger and frustration when he found himself in a situation where he wasn't in control. The techniques he used mainly involved what the fashionable could call mindfulness, but he added to it the rather more traditional remedy of exhausting himself through physical exertion. Hence, it was an hour in the gym and another in the pool. By the time he climbed out of the pool, dripping, it was breakfast time. 

He ate well, not because he was hungry (though he should have been, he just didn't feel like eating much), but because he knew he had to. His intention was not to be seen, and successful hiding required categorically no grumbling stomach. Hopefully he wouldn't be there long enough to have to shit into a plastic bag like the British Army keeping watch on the IRA in the Troubles hiding in a ditch for a fortnight, but, he did have plastic bags on him should the need arise. Still, he avoided the prunes in the fresh fruit cocktail on this occasion.

Back at the wretched house of Q and his flock of unwashed admirers, Bond picked the lock quickly and efficiently. He couldn't rely on Q going out, as he didn't seem to. He did come out into the corridor, though, as Bond was just about to come up the stairs, and James had to duck behind a supporting pillar to conceal himself. He managed to peep out enough to see what Q was up to - he had opened a window which was above a ramshackle flat roof, and was putting out a plate of sardines. Apparently, the cat to eat, it must be some stray Q had felt sorry for. Of course Q himself wasn't willing for anyone to feel sorry for him. 

After a couple of minutes of calling, the cat turned up. Nothing like Q's sleek kits back in London, being cared for by his aunt, this thing was as thin as Q, scared and wide-eyed with startling green, not unlike its benefactor?

..........

Q was heading back to the flat now, shuffling in his low slung jeans and socks decorated with paw prints. He wasn't wearing anything on his top half, though. He stopped to make as if to push back his floppy dark fringe, then huffed out a breath as he remembered it wasn't there anymore. Bond mourned its loss, but clearly Q hadn't come to terms with it either, subconsciously at least. 

The door shut. Bond decided to investigate the landing, now that he'd gone, and trod quietly as he did so. At the end of the corridor was the grimy window. He looked out, and noticed now that there was a balcony, if it could be called that, to his left, outside Q's flat. He hadn't noticed any exit to it, but it might be worth a try. He opened the window and climbed out, praying that the rickety flat roof would take his weight and not be too noisy to walk on. The cat was still there, watching him as it washed first its paw, and then its face. James held his finger up to his lips. Shhhhhush. The cat looked as if it might understand. 

He got onto the balcony without too much ungainly scrambling, it helped that he wasn't too tall and so had a good centre of gravity and was very fit. Tanner wouldn't make it. Eve might, though. 

He pressed his eye to the crack in the curtain's coverage, not the middle gap, because that was too wide and he would be too obviously but the arrow-slit at the near edge, slim enough so that he could see, but not be seen. He was looking into Q's bedroom. It was empty. The door was behind a kind of dressing table, which was why he hadn't seen it before - mind you, he had been a little distracted by a wet naked Q as well. 

In the forefront of his mind was the knowledge that watching the bedroom, as geography dictated he must, would probably involve seeing Q and one of his many new friends in an intimate tableau. This made him uncomfortable, despite the fact he'd been involved in enough threesomes (and moresomes) that watching others having sex wouldn't normally be an issue. Now, he felt troubled, not only because Q didn't know he was watching, which made James a voyeur, but also because he didn't like the whole set up, and especially not Q being involved. 

But there was no other way of trying to determine what motive was driving this lunacy. So, he pulled a piece of Kendal mint cake out of his pocket, and crouched down, waiting. The cat had tired of him now, and stretched out to sleep close by. It might be a long wait.


	5. Cometh the hour...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> James is hidden on the balcony of Q's Munich flat, waiting to see if or when Q brings anyone back to the flat, so he can find out why he's doing this. In the end, the night ends differently than it started.

If Bond was being strictly accurate, his view wasn't really all that great. The dressing table mirror impeded his line of sight, the window was filthy, and the curtains annoyingly frayed. He hoped it would be enough. One good thing, the building hadn't been renovated, so he could hear well enough to make up for the deficiencies in visibility splay.

............

It was almost four dull, uneventful hours before anyone showed. James' back started to ache, and his knee was none too clever either. The joys of getting older, and the payback for abusing his body over the years, too. 

When he did hear the door go, and the sound of voices, however, Bond was instantly back in alert mode, straining to hear. He couldn't get every single word, but it was enough, and he could see the doorway quite well. Q had brought the man straight to the bedroom then?

He saw no signs of any money being exchanged. So this was a voluntary decision, not a need for cash. Was that better or worse? James thought it was probably better, but still completely baffling.

Q looked so innocent, despite the circumstances. He'd probably never lose that ability to look like an impetuous imp, however serious the situation, Bond thought. He suddenly had a mental vision of Q standing at the top of a sand dumb, pointing out to see at a ship far out at sea, the wind blowing dark curls everywhere and the salt air making James feel hungry. He tried to focus on the Q that was here now, shaven headed and fidgeting nervously.

After a couple of minutes of low conversation, Q went to get something from the kitchen, a drink of some kind, Bond thought he said. The man, tall, thin and in a suit, a cut above the previous friend, Bond couldn't say client, because ...anyway, no money, so casual not transactional, poured out glasses of wine from the mini fridge on the dressing table. Bond was close to him on the other side of the glass. The guy was packing his boxers, the outline of his cock defined and full, pressing against the fabric. Bond felt impotent cold fury gripping him, and had to look away. Why, he didn't like to say. 

He heard a small tinkling sound. The man put something into his suit trouser pocket. Picking up the two glasses, he met Q at the doorway and gave him one, keeping the other himself. Bond didn't immediately react. 

Q looked pale and scrawny in a jumper that wore him, rather than vice versa. Bare feet, a bit of a cold coming on, red-bitten lips and green eyes that flickered here and there when he talked, nervous and skittish. 

...........

The man was kissing Q now, taking the empty wine glass from him and assertively claiming his mouth, his red lips, his tongue. A hand roamed, cupping Q's small rounded buttocks, and no doubt more. James couldn't see, Q was facing towards the window, towards him. Now the man had his other hand down the front of Q's jeans, Q appearing passive and uninvolved, eyes closed.

It all appeared to be heading toward just another notch on the Q bedpost.

But something was wrong, something niggled at the back of Bond's mind, about that sound, about the glass, something....

He watched on.

Bond wasn't sure exactly the moment that he realised that Q was not just uninvolved, but incapable. A tipping point though was reached when James watched a small trail of saliva trickle down from the side of Q's mouth, and his eyes had still not opened. 

"Shit."

They were on the bed now, the suit and Q, Q face down and quite still. The man was pulling down Q's jeans and pants, and then his own. His cock was hard and it was just as he was kicking Q's legs apart and mounting him that his back was sprayed with broken glass and the component parts of a dressing table, as James Bond came crashing through the window, feet first and with eyes of pure fury. Bond's boots caught the man a glancing blow on the back of his head and he rolled off Q and onto the floor, trying o get up to see off his assailant. 

He never got the chance. 

Ten minutes later, the businessman was deposited, naked, in an alley a safe distance away, after a very thorough beating that concentrated on ensuring some expensive cosmetic surgery and dentistry. 

..........

James knew the man wouldn't go to the police. He'd made sure the empty phial of sedative had stayed with the guy. But he would need to fix the CCTV, later. He returned to the flat as quickly as he could. He'd put the insensible Q in the recovery position but he hadn't moved in Bond's absence, just lay still, and quiet apart from the occasional plaintive moan.

James sat on the floor, propped against the side of the bed, his left hand bandaged from glass cuts he'd sustained making his entrance. 

This time, he wasn't going to take no for an answer from Q. This was stopping, all of it, right now, tonight. He closed his eyes, and tried to rest a little. Plenty of time for talking about that later. For now, Q was safe, and that meant James could sleep.

............

When he woke, it was to the delightful sound of Q vomiting noisily over the edge of the bed, (by some miracle the other side to where James was slumped). He groaned. Should have thought of that. 

He scrambled up and round the bed, looking down at Q's very woebegone countenance. Q looked as if he thought he was in trouble with Bond. For last night, for yesterday, for the pool of sickly sweet stomach contents pooled on the threadbare rug. 

James did not feel angry. Quite the opposite. He wanted to wipe Q's face with a flannel, tuck him up with Lucozade and a comic, and keep him away from tattooed suitors, smartly dressed date rapists and anyone else who might come near him. He settled for the flannel, for now, as well as cleaning supplies for the vomit, and a bowl for Q to puke in if he felt the need again.

"Sorry". 

Q's voice was muffled from behind the flannel scrubbing at his face. 

Bond was wringing out the cloth he'd now finished with, the floor now clean, which unfortunately meant a clean patch on an otherwise pretty grubby rug. 

"That's ok. You had a rough time last night. Let me get rid of this stuff, then we can talk."

Q gave him the flannel back and snuggled into the bedclothes. He heard James puttering in the bathroom, neatening and straightening. 

James was standing in the doorway now, unshaven and clearly not well rested.

"Did you realise he had spiked your drink?"

Q shook his head, then frowned as the movement made his head ache. 

"Not until it was way too late, not until I was almost out for the count. It's ironic really, I suspect he wanted to fuck me with me all still and compliant, but if he'd left me alone that's pretty much what he'd have got, without going to the lengths of drugging me."

Q sounded put out.

James shook his head. He tried not to think about Q voluntarily acting as the man in the suit had made him when drugged. 

"You don't know what he would have done. You could have been violently raped, or even murdered."

Q looked cross and contrite all at once.

"I know. I know. Thankyou for rescuing me. What happened to him?"

"He'll need a dentist".

 

.........

They had reached a stalemate. 

Q had to admit he was relieved that James had saved him from being assaulted, but humiliated by James having witnessed his mute acquiescence in the bedroom. James was glad he had been here to do it, but had no idea how to get through to Q's emotional side. All he could see was the protective shell, and the defensive verbal parrying.

Ideally, one or both of them was going to need to give a little ground...


	6. Confession

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The morning after James has rescued Q from the man who spiked his drink. And finally, the truth is beginning to be spoken.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HUGE apologies for the delay, my internet hub got fried by an electrical storm even tho it had surge protectors, and I had to wait for a new one! 
> 
> Should be back to normal service now of twice weekly updates! 
> 
> XxxTeaandcakesxxxx

James slept lightly on the sofa, while Q mumbled restlessly through the open door in the bedroom. Bond had got used to the stale smell of the place, but he still didn't want to stay here any longer than he had to. For now, it would do for a quick kip, Q needed the rest. 

He was surprised when he opened his eyes to see that the sun was much higher in the sky, and its rays were being blocked by a Q, up and dressed, regarding him.

“Let’s go and get coffee, black, strong. And maybe the rye toast they have, it is only a few doors down.”

And then will you talk to me about all this…this bloody mess?” James couldn’t help but sound exasperated, but it was frustration built out of worry.

“Yee-esss.” Q didn’t sound sure, and was fidgeting. At least he hadn’t said no. 

………..

The café was almost as unappealing as the flat. The ceilings were high, with acanthus-leaved cornicing, but below that was woodchip and plywood doors and a thick layer of yellowing grease and grime. A hygiene inspection certificate fluttered as they opened the door. It was out of date, Bond noticed. That figured.

Q made a beeline for a small table in the corner, at the back. He’d come in his T shirt and jeans, then swaddled himself in a duffel coat. He looked like a bald Paddington bear. He was still fiddling, folding up the tiny packets of sugar and then unfolding them, peering at the little colour-coded sauce sachets. 

When their black coffee and toast arrived, James buttered his and then put his knife down firmly. 

“Talk.”

Q stared at him, long skinny fingers halfway to his mouth with a triangle of toast smothered in butter. He frowned, and dropped the toast back onto the plate. 

“There’s actually remarkably little to tell. I needed a break.”

“Q, please give me more than that. I didn’t need to come all the way to Berlin for that.”

Q regarded him sternly. 

“I’m not sure you needed to come to Berlin at all. As far as I know, you are retired.”

Bond leaned forward over the table towards Q’s feigned nonchalance, close enough so that his breath would be felt by the Quartermaster.

“Please.”

As far as Q knew, James Bond had never said please to anyone, for anything, except when undercover on a mission (and then only when he had to).

Q sighed.

“It really doesn’t concern you, or the Service, James. Agents and other departmental staff are permitted to have a personal life. I made a mistake, got too close to someone, even though I scarcely knew them, it transpired. They left, I freaked out a little, and decided on a short and glamorous break in Hamburg.”

James was sitting back in his chair now, chewing toast and nodding, hoping to appear encouraging so that Q would continue to talk.

“And all the men, since you’ve arrived? Was that how you lived in London?”

Bond held his breath for the answer. 

“No. Well, as a teenager, yes, a bit. Sometimes. But not since then, really. Normally I just have occasional one-off dates.

“With men or women.”

“Men. Only men.”

“Thankyou for being honest.”

Q thought for a moment.

“You don’t have to approve, of my lifestyle that is. I understand if it makes you uncomfortable.”

James looked at him from underneath a raised eyebrow.

“Why on earth would I be uncomfortable?”

Q shifted around, hands around his coffee mug, protective, defensive.

“As a straight man, and an old school “love them and leave them” type. I know from your file that all your notified relationships have been straight, and contrary to your standoff with Silva, none of your missions have involved a safe sex encounter either. Though it was nicely played with Silva, I concede.”

Q looked earnest and serious. James put his hands behind his head and smirked.

“And what else has my personnel file told you? You really have no business dipping in there, Quartermaster?”

Q blushed crimson. 

“Not much. There was a lot to read and I was reading upside down.”

“Hmm. I expect you were. You probably didn’t see that my highest ranked strength areas are determination to achieve goals, improvisation and hunger for new experiences, then?”

Q blushed again, even darker if that were possible.

“Of course. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have looked.

James shook his head. 

“Feel free, though some of it might destroy your impression of me as some kind of sleek lothario ladykiller. Maybe twenty years ago, but I’m choosy now. And I don’t always love and leave, as Vesper Lynd should attest.”

Q nodded.

“Vesper…shes….she looked…quite striking. Very beautiful.”

“Well, as they say about horses, Q, handsome is as handsome does”. Beauty is no guarantee of fine character or loyalty. He colouring was striking though. Quite similar to yours, actually. Dark hair, green eyes, slim, clever. Strange. Anyway, we’re getting away from the point. Why the change in behaviour, why Munich, why now?”

Q didn’t look at him. 

“How is Madeleine?”

“What? I imagine she’s fine. Why do you ask?”

“Are you – that is – is it….alright? You and her. Is it – what you wanted, what you thought it would be?”

“That’s a strange question, Q. Why don’t you say what you think. I’m not one of your clever Q branch minions, I can’t discern meaning from cryptic codes. Why are you interested in the success or otherwise…” (at this, James winced slightly, before continuing)”…of my recent marriage to the beautiful and accomplished Mrs Bond?”

Now Q did face him, his face chalk white. 

“That’s why I left, why I came to Munich, why I fell to my knees for anyone who wanted it. You took her with you, and you left me standing on that bridge in London. You chose her and I wanted it to be me. You ripped my heart into pieces and then you invited me to your wedding, James. Your wedding to her.  
None of this is your issue. You never encouraged me, never led me on, never engaged in anything other than mild flirtatious office banter, don’t get me wrong, I’m not accusing you of that. But couldn’t you have had eyes enough to see that I was – I am still – wishing I was something to you, and even though I know it’s impossible, the idea that it will never happen because you married someone else is so final, and so terrible and unbearable that I don’t know how to be the person that can do that, cope with that as a reality, day in, day out, one foot in front of the other for the rest of my long and pointless existence. So, I came here because of the clubs, and I tried to forget with casual sex and equally casual drugs.

I don’t mind if you just walk out now, I’m sorry to have unloaded this embarrassing pile of feelings on you, so long as you don’t laugh when you do it. Please don’t do that. For you this is just a vaguely flattering crush from a gay colleague, but for me, this is my life, so please don’t humiliate me as you leave.”

Bond sat down heavily, and said nothing, pursing his thin lips and glancing at Q in between sipping at his coffee. They sat like that for some minutes, with Q wiping away small rivulets of tears and snot and mopping both rather ineffectually with the café paper napkins.

In the end, after the prolonged and awkward silence, Bond stood. His voice was low and quiet. He threw some euros on the table to cover their bill plus a tip. 

“Put your coat on. It’s cold out.”

Meekly, miserably, Q stumbled after him as Bond strode out of the coffee shop and out into the chill of the Munich morning.


	7. A basketball court and a flight.

There was a dusty park at the end of the road, rubbish strewn and forlorn. Two teenagers rode blankly around on a carousel style small see saw, feet pushing themselves onwards in circles. They looked about fifteen, but could have been older or younger, it was hard to tell under all that attitude apparel. 

In the park's nearest corner was an all weather games court, mesh fenced on three sides. The fourth side was brick walled, the hoop for basketball fixed high. 

Underneath that basketball net, without warning Q found himself being manhandled against that wall, and kissed with the kind of thoroughness and artistry that, when he was able to both breathe and think once again, caused him to reassess his view of Bond as straight and as a dinosaur relic.

Bond's tongue was in his mouth, and it felt strange, definitely an invasion of his equilibrium, the man was hungry and searched to taste him, claiming his mouth while Bond's hands were cupping his face, holding its angular features there. 

"James. I - James."

Q managed to get only those words out before he was breathing Bond's breath again, as teeth and tongues parried in erotic choreography. 

"Shhh. Only speak to say stop. If you want me to stop."

"Stop!"

The reaction was immediate, and Bond sprung away from Q like a scalded cat. Each saw that the other was aroused, that was the thing about men, really not easy to hide. Neither commented on that. James wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, then licked his hand as if not wanting to lose Q's presence. He nodded at Q. 

"My apologies. I read it all wrong. You were right, this is none of my business."

And then, he turned and went. Just like that, with the taste of him still on Q's swollen scarlet slash of lips. By the time Q had come to realise what James meantl, the man was well out of sight. 

.............

Q hurried back to the flat. Why had he said stop? He knew why. To see if James Bond would, or if he was like the other men, the ones he'd allowed into the flat and all over him, in him. Several of those had pushed too far and neither had stopped when Q said the word, nor when he struggled, nor when he beat his heels on the floor in a drummed distress signal.

Q had to know if James was like them. And yet, such a hollow victory. The prince, being proved worthy, misreads the test as rejection and flees. His quarry is left unharmed but alone. Q struggled up to the flat cursing, dry eyed but just as desperate as a weeping knight-at-arms. 

............

The flat was empty. It didn't take Q's IT skills long to find out that Bond was booked on the next available flight to London. There was nothing Q could do to prevent that happening. So, he did the next best thing, or perhaps the only thing. He booked the seat next to Bond's in business class, maxing out his credit card in the process, borrowed a moped from the lady in the ground floor flat, and hammered the poor underpowered machine all the way to the airport. 

............

 

James Bond sat in the club lounge until he was called forward to his flight. Economy were already boarded, stuffed in like a rush hour train, but for James there was only deference and left turns. He settled himself in, it wasn't too long a flight, and if he hadn't been so preoccupied with thinking over the events of that morning, he might have been in his usual state of alertness for the peculiar looking individual who boarded at the last moment before the doors were closed. 

He did not see this, and was rubbing his face with his hands as he muttered about his gaydar not operating as well as his girldar, when his complimentary dry roasteds were plopped into his lap, and a slim boyish frame slid into the leather seat next to his own. 

He glanced across. 

"Q."

"007." 

Just then the announcements, inescapable however exalted the cabin, drowned out any further conversation for a while. Then the steward came with wine lists and more nibbles, and the plane taxied and took off. 

Then, quiet. 

........

"I wanted to explain."

"Believe me, there's no need. You are not at fault. I read it all wrong, and anyway I shouldn't have kissed you then, after the experience you'd had the day before. It was all a mistake. Dont think any more.."

"I want to explain!"

Q's voice had risen, and their neighbour across the aisle, a woman of un certain age, pursed her lips and sipped her vodka.

James fell silent. 

Q took a breath. 

"I - It was the wrong thing to do. Not the kiss, that wasn't wrong. It was....good. I mean. When I said stop. I needed to know. I had to know, if you would, stop. Because not everyone does, and I couldn't face...anyway. Just - I needed to know if everything was alright, before we got too far. But i shouldn't have done it, I should have found a way."

"I didn't give you much of a chance though, did I? Much too soon, in I come, wading right in as though I had some kind of seigneurial right, shoving you up against a wall like some serving wench."

Bond appeared ashamed. 

Q shook his head. "You didn't get it wrong. It was all fine, I just needed to know I could trust you."

Bond smiled sadly, a frown at his brow.

"I shouldn't have been even coming near to kissing you before I was certain you had that."

Q looked confused.

"But I've been sleeping with all those men?"

"Yes." Bond sighed. "You have, and each one of them taking a little trust away with them when they leave, I bet. Your promiscuity isn't a problem, Q, you can sleep with whoever you want, except for the fact that it is visibly making you sadder and sadder, which is the opposite to your aim."

There was a tray table situation then, and a meal which delivered flavour adequately but whose texture could only be described as disconcerting. 

They ate in silence. 

Once the tray tables were once again safely stowed, and the stewards clinking cutlery in the galley, Q resumed the conversation.

"I wanted you, you saw that, felt it. And I think you wanted me too. What, James, what could I ever be? We're flying back to London, and then you will depart back to your lovely wife and perfect Country Life feature lifestyle, all Labradors and Range Rovers, boot rooms and wine cellars, and I will skulk back to MI6 and be hauled over the coals for my "inexcusably risky personal conduct" and then set to work back at the coal face of Q branch. There is no reason that our paths should even cross in future, nothing to bind us, except maybe an invitation to the baptism of the twins - they run in Madeleine's family, by the way."

James stared straight ahead. The way through the woods, in the poem, divided here in two. Which way to turn?


	8. Q's flat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The aftermath of Q's profession of love to James. It ought to be plain sailing, right?

They walked through the terminal in silence, Q occasionally casting a darting glance at Bond's expression, which, as befitted a poker player and secret agent, gave absolutely nothing away. It was set like stone, he was grim faced and looking straight ahead of him. Q almost tripped over the anorak he'd been carrying, trying to catch up, trying to get some clue. There was none. 

They collected their luggage. 

There was a car waiting in the pick up area. 

'This is it, then', thought Q. 'He's going to get in this car, and drive away, back to his house and his wife and his life. And I - I'm going to have to carry on, go with half my heart about my ways, and wait for that christening invitation. Which l will have to decline, sending a generous gift in my stead, wishing the happy family all the best. Except I don't. Wish them the best. And that makes me feel like a bad person.'

The door was opening now, and Bond was getting in. Q waited for the door to close again. Maybe once it was, James would wind the window down, forgive Q the embarrassment the Quartermaster's declaration of love must have caused, and shake his hand so that they could part on good, civil, respectable terms. 

James was making a call. The door stayed open. 

Q was getting cold. The trains were on the blink and he really wanted to be in his warm bed and crying into a cat, not standing here waiting for his life to be summarily despoiled by a ruthless killer with too many lines on his face and too many hits on his stats.

James was speaking. Q couldn't hear him above the racket of a black cab and private hire driver arguing about who had boxed the other in so tight they couldn't get out of the parking spot. Q leaned into the car. He waited for James to repeat himself. Instead, he felt his shoulders grabbed and he lost his balance on the kerb, ending up with his face in Bond's crotch and his legs in the air. He was hauled unceremoniously into the limousine by the back of his trousers, and ended up an ungainly heap, staring into Bond's grinning face.

"I suppose you think that was funny?"

"Not at all, Q. I realised I was hungry, and your flat was nearer than 006's floor. You were dithering around on the pavement looking like a wet weekend."

Q bristled.

"So. That's it? You want to use me as a convenient transport cafe before heading home to canapes and cocktails? You really are a piece of work, Bond." 

Bond said nothing, and the rest of the journey was spent in silence. 

...........

At Q's building, the luggage and the two men unloaded, Q led the way to the entrance hall, then towards the lift. It was there waiting and they got in, Q glaring at James in a way that only he could. His eyes were possessed of a quality of such soft sadness, though, that it could not seem cold, only fierce and fire-filled. 

The flat seemed empty without the cats, even with the weird presence of James Bond as well as Q. Q muttered something about the heating and could be heard making peeping sounds on one of the many electronic keypads dotted around the walls. The flat wasn't huge, Q clearly spent his cash on expensive kit, not just IT but audio visuals as well. 

James cleared his throat. 

"Do you have takeaway menus? Or shall I go online?"

Q shrugged. Another glare.

"To be honest I'm really not that hungry, 007. Why don't you stop bugging me and go home to Madeleine?" 

Bond looked away, out of the window aa Q stood in the doorway, fiddling with the door hinge and rubbing his ear. 

"Because I don't think I belong there, in that life, with Madeleine. It's taken me some time - too long - to see it, to see how ill-suited I am. That it could never make me happy, just dull and dried out."

Q folded his arms. His heart jumped, but he told it internally to stop that, because James was rejecting something but wasn't ready to embrace a radical alternative, and that Q wouldn't let him, too, because he refused to be the consolation prize or the rebound option. 

James frowned at him, wanting Q to say something. 

"Go home, James. Sort it out with Madeleine, whatever you need to do. Take some time to work out why you feel it couldn't work, and to settle again into who you are."

"And that's it?" Bond sounded shocked. Not used to people rejecting him, even before he'd invited them into his life, most people were happy to be his second or third choice, for however it lasted.

"That's it." 

Q turned away so that James couldn't see his expression. He didn't have 007's poker face, worst luck, and he knew it would show that this wasn't what he wanted, not at all. 

Bond went as if to walk towards him, but Q set his face, turned, and announced fake-brightly,

"I'm off to collect the cats. I may be a while. I'll take my keys, just pull the door to as you leave."

And with that, he left.


	9. Eve despairs of them both

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another very short chapter! but at least it's frequent.

When Q returned to the flat with his cats in their carrier, he found the door closed, and the flat empty of James. There was a note, though, written in his confident looping scrawl. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

'You were right, after a fashion. I am going to talk to Madeleine. 

But this, this is not over, Q. 

James.'

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Q tried to work out what it meant. If he was going back to Madeleine, he surely meant to do the right thing and stick with his marriage. So, anything between them, logically, was over. Bond knew that he was not interested in a relationship in which James still had a wife and a life quite apart. He wouldn't be Bond's dirty secret. His sexuality he'd had as a secret as an adolescent, and he'd vowed he would never be anything other than open again. 

The next day, about lunchtime, he gave a deep sigh, gathered his kit, decided to wear his dodgiest jeans, and went back to work. There were looks and nudges when he dragged himself up for a "little chat" with M. Eve looked cross with him too. 

"I'm surprised you are showing your face."

Q scowled. 

"I have a job to do. Bond retrieved me as per instructions and I am reporting for duty."

"Not that, you silly boy. James. He came in to report back early this morning. Face like thunder. How did you mess that up?"

Q stared at her. 

"You...know? About me, about James."

"Q, underneath that terrible soldier haircut and the dodgy jeans - chains on a weekday, really - you are not being very bright. I've known James for several decades, we've even slept together a number of times, purely out of curiosity on my part and alley cat randiness on his, and I know him as well as I know my own face. Of course I know."

"Who else knows? Not that there's anything - not that we did - anything?"

"And that last part is precisely why I am so bloody cross with you. And no, no one else knows. Mallory would take a Dim View. The rest of them are either in love with James or besotted with you, it never occurs to them to join the dots." 

Q shook his head. 

"He's gone back to her. He told me, left a note."

"Did he now? Do you still have it? Can I see it?"

Q nodded and pulled the crumpled piece of paper out of his jeans. There weren't that chain-crusted, just a little reminder of Munich. 

Moneypenny scanned the note, then handed it back, looking smug. 

"Of course, Q. Im sorry to have doubted."

The buzzer went, and Q was escorted in to see a weary and irritated looking Mallory. 

Behind him, Eve rolled her eyes. 

..............

 

James did go back to the house, to Madeleine. And found her finding comfort in the arms of her tennis instructor, entwined in the summerhouse, jug of barley water and orange quarters untouched on the table. She was contrite but he found himself feeling only sympathy for her. After all, the fact he hadn't been adulterous was purely as a result of the stubbornness of Q, not any moral fibre on his part. He told her so, once Jason with the biceps and the impressive lob shots had departed. Told her, too, that he was sorry it had all happened like this, that she sought a refuge from danger and he was still seeking the opposite. He didn't tell her it was Q, but he was pretty sure she guessed, regardless. 

The one big regret he had was not that he had let things get so far with Madeleine, he had enjoyed the months they had spent, but that the fact that the relationship had ended with his wife's adultery might get back to Q, and that Q might then conclude that he was still second choice, still the beneficiary of a rebounding Bond. And might still reject James on that basis. 

So, he had a favour to ask Madeleine. If she had everything except his London flat, would she agree not to ever disclose this fact? She was very happy not to have it made public. 

They kissed, and parted, and James packed some things. 

He was heading back to London, unsure of his reception.


	10. A visitor

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So we are almost done. Probably one more chapter, which will contain smut :-)))

Q was not going to regret having sent James away. 

No. 

It was the rIght thing to do, maybe the first thing he'd done right for a while. No more thoughts of romance, no more casual sex. He thought he was pretty rubbish at both of them. He also thought his body was awful, like a scrawny chicken. Which just went to show how people can be super intelligent and very dim at the same time, Bond would say later. 

Q was in his PJs already, a cat on each side of him on the sofa, and a pot of something that looked very like compost steaming on the coffee table. Q had not eaten much in Germany except semen, but what he had eaten was definitely less healthy than spunk, being mainly of the Speck und Kartoffeln variety. 

His dinner was an unappetising sludge of grains and broth. It was packed with nutrients but infinitely depressing. Maybe he'd stop at the sushi place on the way home tomorrow, and get something more inspiring. He would need some treats to maintain his dull sexless existence, after all, and to distract him from thoughts about Bond, and Bond's lips and kiss, and the feeling of their mutual arousal. 

Enough. He took another desultory spoonful of the horrible healing soup. 

................

The Aston sped through the dark like a rapier cutting pure silk. The traffic was relatively quiet at this time of night and James would have enjoyed the drive if the circumstances had been different. Was he really going to ask a man young enough to be, if not his son, then a much younger brother, to allow him to share his life? 

Bond rarely took chances where he couldn't assess the odds. And now, he had absolutely no idea whether Q would agree, or even if he would hear James' embassy.

And now he was here. He parked a little way down the street, and sat there for a while, watching the orange of the streetlights flicker as the breeze made the trees shiver. He shivered himself a little. 

Not much mattered to him, these days, not since Vesper. Madeleine was dear to him, but she needed a rock and he was a volcano who could hurt her more than he helped. It had taken him a long time to realise that the dreamlike elfin Quartermaster had cast a spell on him. He wasn't expecting it, didn't think that a relationship with a man, still less one that was so unlike himself, was where his future lay. 

It still might not lie that way. Someone once told him that if love isn't reciprocated, then it was never love, only infatuation. He didn't agree with that. If Q rebuffed him for a second time, it would be because Q didn't want a relationship with him, irrespective of whether they loved each other. And he would respect that decision, and travel to some of the locations his work had not yet taken him, and try to work out a way through. But he would do so a broken man. He was too old to find another mate, and he didn't want to try. He wanted Q, he loved Q, even if Q didn't accept him, didn't believe he was genuine. 

.............

Q had just got comfortable when his security sensors alerted him that he had a visitor. He placed the now empty pot of sludge out of reach of the cats, not that they looked remotely tempted, and flicked on the monitor screen of his TV. His breath caught, and he coughed slightly, staring at the unmistakeable figure approaching the front door of the building. It was as if in a film, time seemed to be malleable, the walk seemed slow and deliberate, and Q just watched and waited. He ran his fingers through his hair. He'd spilt a drop of the broth on his t shirt, and tried to rub it away. 

The buzzer went on the intercom. Q opened the screen on his phone and saw Bond standing there. Looking slightly unsure of himself, if that could ever be said of James Bond. 

James said nothing. He just looked into the tiny camera's gaze, and in that few seconds, Q learned not everything, but enough to make his finger swipe on his phone screen to release the locks and allow Bond in. 

Bond appeared. Tired looking, from care and, let's be honest, age. Again, he didn't speak, and Q simply opened the door and stood back, biting his lip as Bond nodded and came past him into the flat. 

Q closed the door, resetting the locks.


	11. The final chapter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here be smut! 
> 
> Apologies for the delay! I had to shear my sheep!

Neither wanted to be the first to speak about the stuff that mattered. Q was making tea, for heaven's sake, tea! And Bond was flicking through the technical looking tome on the desk in the corner of the room. It was all numbers, no words. You needed the key to unlock what it meant. 

Q brought in a tray and gave that nervous momentary smile that wiped onto and off his face so quickly it almost might not have happened. 

The tray placed, the tea poured, there was nowhere left to go but here. Q took pity on them both.

'No Madeleine?'

Bond knew this was less of a social nicety than a deeper enquiry.

'No. We - Madeleine and I - we...aren't going to continue. With - anything. We made a mistake. It's - it's over.'

Q froze. 

'Oh.' 

His teacup, which had been halfway to his mouth, was slowly lowered back to the saucer.

'What will you do? You still have your flat, but will you try to rejoin Six or is all that still over? If I can do anything to help...'

Bond cut him off by walking over to him and standing over him. People always thought James was much taller than Q but in reality there wasn't more than an inch or two in it, ot was their physiques and presence that set them apart. Q felt that now, that essential otherness of Bond's body to his own. 

Bond's hands reached down, and pulled him up, so that now, they were face to face.

'Don't you want to know? Why Madeleine and I split?'

Q's heart was beating so loudly and so fast he wondered if James could hear it. His voice was quiet when it came.

'Yes'.

James looked him straight in the eye. 

'I ended it, because of you. She doesn't know about you, just that we agreed she and I couldn't work. And that I missed the work, which I do, but that's not the reason for the split.

Q's mind buzzed. He hardly dared ask the question, for fear that the answer might not be all he hoped.

'What am I to you, James? I can't believe that it's anything vital. I'm a lousy lover with a chequered history. My work is unintelligible to almost everyone and my flat smells of cat litter. I'm not rich, not remotely glamorous and you, according to your file, have never fucked a man. It feels like this must be a game, that I'm going to be a plaything you tire of, because I can't see how someone - like you - would throw aside marriage to a beauty like Madeleine and all home comforts for someone like me. It's just not logical.'

James growled. 

'Q. For an intelligent man, probably the most intelligent in MI6, possibly in the country, you really are remarkably stupid.

Q opened his mouth to protest, then closed it again. Bond was rude, but Q thought maybe he was right.

"That's not a kind thing to say."

"No, you're right, it isn't. But it needed to be said, and you needed to hear it."

"So now, what?" 

Q stood with hunched shoulders. James took his woebegone face in his hands and tipped their foreheads together. 

"Now, beautiful boy, I am going to show you how sex should be, and you are going to be my technical helpdesk if I am making a mess of it."

Q blinked, then nodded. 

.........

The bedroom was a mess and did, it had to be admitted, smell a bit territorial in a feline kind of way. Afterwards, James could never smell cat piss without a small smile. At least the bed looked clean...ish.

He looked around. 

"Anywhere I can leave my clothes that will be safe from furballs and claw snags?" 

Q nodded, looking embarassed. 

"The bathroom's safest. They're scared of the shower spray so they won't go in there.

James disappeared to divest himself of his expensive apparel, and Q wondered what he should do. In the end, he fell into his usual routine, stripping completely, lying face down on the bed and starting to open himself up using his fingers, lubed and slick.

He sensed rather than heard Bond come back into the room, barefoot and naked he guessed from the lack of sound. A moment later, instead of feeling the pressure of another body and the deep breathing of a lover poised for intercourse, he felt a kiss on the back of his neck, and his fingers being gently but firmly shifted from out of his arse. James kissed some more, and murmured into his ear. 

"Don't you want me to help you with that?"

Q laughed nervously.

"Most guys like you to be prepped. So they can get going".

James frowned. 

"So what about you? With all this wham bam business, when do you get your pleasure?"

"Maybe at the end. Sometimes after they've gone, if I'm hard. Often, I'm not, they're rough and its more vigour than arousing."

"Then why do you lie here and let them do it, let them fuck you hard and then leave you soft and unsatisfied? I don't get it, what you get out of it?"

"They might be more likely to come back? To want to do it again?" 

"Jesus Christ. Fuck them. Fuck them all." 

...........

James signalled to Q to lie on his side, and lay down next to him, face to face. Neither of them was erect, not now, and James had a serious expression on his face. Q looked uncomfortable with the arrangement of their bodies. 

"Will you let me touch you?" 

Q nodded, hesitantly. His previous practice might have been a miserable ritual borne out of low self esteem, but it allowed him to keep his face hidden and his encounters impersonal. This was different, his body was tense and he didn't know how he would react. 

James started stroking his skin, avoiding the intimate areas, just brushing the pale soft skin. He noted the stark contrast of the trail of near black hair from the navel down to the cock. He absorbed every detail of Q's upper body physique, his unexpectedly wide shoulders, impossibly narrow waist, abundant underarm hair and the generous sprinkling of moles peppering the creamy flesh. 

His mouth swept across Q's face, breathing warm nothings, barely audible. Q didn't know what to do with his own slicked hands, and wiped them on the sheet. He didn't know how to give up the illusion of control that insisting on having none, face down on the floor, had always provided - or almost always. What was the right thing to do? 

James was kissing him now. He'd been kissed by many men, in all sorts of locations, some of them very old hands in the scene, and yet here, in his scruffy flat, on his scruffy sheets, he felt strangely euphoric at the first exploring intrusion. James was forceful yet controlled, and Q felt as though he was bound, but with threads of silk. 

It wasn't all so poetic. As their arousal grew, Bond got more physical and Q delightedly surrendered to the man's undeniable magnetism. When James' lips began to kiss and caress Q's cock, Q's hands clenched tightly shut, nails embedded in his palm, until he felt the urge to touch James and his hands reached around Bond's neck. 

He could have come from that alone, but James had other ideas. He kept whispering to Q, all sorts of things, wild ideas, dirty ideas, romantic ideas. James was as hard as Q was even though it was Q who had the benefit of all the attention. 

James was about to open Q up with his fingers, when his plans went awry. He'd been suckling on Qs penis for a few minutes, and thought he had enough time to get in him, but suddenly Q gave a press to his neck, a strangled exhale, and then came in James's mouth. He tried not to cough, and swallowed what he could, then found a (hopefully clean) tissue to wipe his mouth. 

Q looked completely drained, but smiled at him shyly. 

'Your turn. Get me ready?'

James nodded, and felt the strange pressure and weirdness of having his fingers up another man's anus. It was at once thrilling and repellant to him, this first time (though in time it would seem second nature), and he was cautious, Q reaching for a second finger to encourage him. 

The moment of penetration was something that James never forgot, after. He'd frankly lost count of the women he'd made love to, and as he grew older the individual details of each encounter had tended to merge a bit. This, it never merged. Not only because it was his first time with a man, but also because it was his first time with Q. Decades later, he would still remember it with clarity and joy, still smile at the vivid recollection of the gift of trust and exquisite sensation that Q gave to him. 

 

................

 

He never slept with a woman again. He never slept with anyone again - apart from Q, that was. 

As he came, shouting, uncontrolled and jubilant, into Q's body, James Bond knew that for the first time in his life, he had no wish to leave, to look for the next job, to hop onto the next plane. This, now, was his home, with a brilliant slattern of a boy who had too much hair and too little flesh, who loved him beyond all reason, and whom he would, quite soon, marry.


End file.
